On Daughters-at-Work Day, Some Are Including the Sons

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On the fourth annual Take Our Daughters to Work Day today there is a lot less talk about discrimination against girls and a lot more about the evils of excluding boys.

Indeed, the Ms. Foundation for Women, which started the event in 1993, estimates that about 30 percent of participating employers are marking the day this year by inviting both sexes to Take Our Children to Work, Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work or even, adding insult to injury, Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work.

The foundation started Take Our Daughters to Work Day after a wave of highly publicized research about how girls are shortchanged in school and lose self-confidence as they approach adolescence. The response was so overwhelming that what was planned as a program in New York City became a nationwide event involving millions of girls at thousands of workplaces.

"What created this day," said Marie Wilson, president of the Ms. Foundation, "is women, men, teachers, parents, everybody, saying, 'Right, this is true, I see what happened to my 11-year-old girl, how she used to be sure of herself and now she's not; she used to be interested in math and science, and now she just talks about her hair.' "

But as the program grew -- some five million girls took part last year -- so did the controversy about sending girls off to exciting work programs while their brothers were left in half-empty classrooms.

Meanwhile, the spirit of the times changed as programs favoring one sex or race came under sharp attack from opponents of affirmative action. So it should be no surprise that this year, many companies are inviting boys and girls alike to visit.

For example, the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, the chewing-gum manufacturer, last year invited only girls and used the Ms. Foundation curriculum. This year, it has responded to repeated inquiries from employees with sons by designing the program for daughters and sons.

At the Chevron Corporation in San Francisco, there will be no program for girls this year. Last year, the company participated in the daughters' day in April, taking girls to refineries, glass-blowing demonstrations and discussion groups. In August, it had a separate program for boys.

"We did both, and it was just too much work," said Sue Osborne, the company's work-family coordinator. So from now on, the company plans to alternate, starting this year with a boys' event on June 27.

Many other companies, including Sears, Chrysler, Ameritech and the Bank of America, invite boys and girls together.

"We want to be inclusive, consistent with everything else we do," said Jon Harmon, a spokesman for the Ford Motor Company in Detroit, where sons and daughters are both welcome.

"The first year, people assumed it was Take Your Daughter to Work Day because that was what was talked about. But after that, we wanted to make clear that whatever we did should be inclusive. We think boys and girls can benefit from seeing men and women working together as equals in the business world. We don't exclude by gender for other things, so why would we for this?"

That kind of statement, from a company where there is only 1 woman among the 34 vice presidents and only 2 among the 15 directors -- not an unusual situation -- drives officials of the Ms. Foundation crazy.

"It bothers me when companies where all the high officers are men say they're making it Take Our Children Day because they don't want to discriminate against boys," said Jill Savitt, a spokeswoman for the Ms. Foundation. "Executives with glass ceilings shouldn't throw stones. I think people are afraid to stand up for girls, or they think some affirmative-action bogyman's going to get them."

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Even those who acknowledge that girls face special challenges sound reluctant to exclude boys from today's events.

Dr. Henry Fraind, assistant superintendent of the Miami schools, said that while he understood that the program was intended to help girls and respected that goal, he was leaving it to the individual principals to decide whether to excuse boys from school for the day as well.

Billie Gimenev, principal of the Claude Pepper Elementary School in Miami, said: "I don't see it as a rigid program. If someone wanted to bring a son to work, they could."

Take Our Daughters to Work Day poses a special problem for working women who have sons as well as daughters. Alicia Andrade, an administrative assistant at a technical consulting firm in Chicago, said that when she first heard about the program, she was very enthusiastic about taking her daughter to work with her.

"I thought it was a very good way for girls to see what they can do with their lives," she said. "I took my daughter the first two years. But my son said he felt left out."

So this year her son, now 12, will come to work. "I'm alternating now," Ms. Andrade, a single mother, said. "My daughter thinks it's perfectly fair."

The Ms. Foundation, which provides materials and information to help employers organize the programs, said it was committed to keeping the focus of Take Our Daughters Day squarely on girls.

"We're still very excited about having a day to intervene in girls' lives and give some attention to their aspirations and abilities, their health, their strength and their resilience, before they're pregnant, before they're depressed, before they're victims of violence," Ms. Wilson said.

But at the same time, the Ms. Foundation has helped to form a loose coalition of groups to create an event for boys. While the plans are still in the earliest stages, it would probably be on a weekend and would be nothing like Take Our Daughters to Work Day. And the boys' event may be even more feminist than the one for the girls.

"We have in mind family activities, about helping boys negotiate violence, helping boys grow up to be responsible fathers," said George McKecuen of Human Resources Development Inc. in Elizabeth, N.C., which helps people develop their potential.

He is helping to plan the boys' event along with groups like the Oakland Men's Project, which works to prevent violence against women, and Northeastern University's Mentors in Violence Prevention project.

At the Marin Horizon School, a private school in Mill Valley, Calif., just north of San Francisco, there is a boys' program for those left behind on Take Our Daughters to Work Day. A group of fathers and faculty members will lead drumming rituals, discussions of sexual stereotyping and poetry writing on men's feelings.

Girls who have no other placement for the day will spend the time working at the nursery school.

A version of this article appears in print on April 25, 1996, on Page A00001 of the National edition with the headline: On Daughters-at-Work Day, Some Are Including the Sons. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe